But at the same time the low price of grain kept the farmers poor. New mortgages were added to farms already heavily “papered”; even the crops were mortgaged in advance. No new farm implements were bought. Throughout the farming communities of the Middle West there were no longer purchases of buggies and parlour organs. Somewhere in other remoter corners of the world the cheap wheat, that meant cheap bread, made living easy and induced prosperity, but in the United States the poverty of the farmer worked upward through the cogs and wheels of the whole great machine of business. It was as though a lubricant had dried up. The cogs and wheels worked slowly and with dislocations. Things were a little out of joint. Wall Street stocks were down. In a word, “times were bad.” Thus for three years. It became a proverb on the Chicago Board of Trade that the quickest way to make money was to sell wheat short. One could with almost absolute certainty be sure of buying cheaper than one had sold. And that peculiar, indefinite thing known⁠—among the most unsentimental men in the world⁠—as “sentiment” prevailed more and more strongly in favour of low prices.